Albatross
by Syrinx
Summary: They are side by side. They are not touching. He wouldn’t dare. Ashleigh & Mike, continuation of Integrity.


Albatross  
By Syrinx  
A/N: Sequel to Argonaut, continuation of Integrity. Also related to Oath and Resolution. Mike, Ashleigh.

He never thought _you are this type of person_. He still doesn't.

She is remarkably efficient about snipping apart their lives. Boxes come out of nowhere, carloads of shit he hardly recognizes roll down the gravel drive and disappear, the farm and house are stripped down, and the horses…well, that had been the part he'd come to terms with first. The horses, after all, had never been his.

He doesn't fight anything, lets her take everything. She could have taken Jazzman and he'd probably only meagerly protest before packing the stallion on the trailer himself. He knows she's trying to be fair, tries to get him to tell her what he wants, tries to remember what was his in the first place, but he doesn't really care. Take it all.

On the last day, when the horses are gone and the memories are strewn like shattered glass across the floor of the old farm house, they stand together in the family room. They are side by side. They are not touching. He wouldn't dare.

There is a box by her feet, and on the coffee table are four photo albums, most of their clear plastic sleeves left empty now. In her hands she holds her treasures: horses he's never seen and horses he has, her sprawling youth, and Christina's toothless baby smiles. On the top of the stack he finds a moment of clear irony: the celebration for Wonder and the Prince, Ashleigh and Brad standing with their horses, smiles on their faces, like they did this every day.

(Sometimes, he wonders what they are to each other, but he sees the tension in her shoulders, her set jaw, and her tired eyes. After today he will lose the right to put these thoughts to rest, but he will never ask.)

Instead he asks the relatively obvious, "Is there anything else?"

She doesn't bother looking at him when she says, "No." Of course there is something else. She's standing in it, surrounded by it. The house, the farm, the horses, her marriage, the future; there is everything, and she is leaving it. She puts the photographs in the open box, folds it shut, and picks it up. Together they walk out to her car, the old thing that she's never gotten rid of because it was never a priority.

He stands to the wayside while she pushes the box in with the others and slams the door. The keys are in her hands, and she is not crying. She's done that already. In front of him, in front of _him_, and he knows she's finished.

"We have an arrangement," she says, and he simply nods. Christina is the hardest thing. She is the light of his world, and he knows Ashleigh will never forgive him for their daughter's sake. To a certain extent, he will never forgive himself either.

There was a life he once envisioned, one that was executed almost perfectly, up until a point. Christina was, will always be, a part of it, no matter how marred and broken. He knows, also, that this is another reason why Ashleigh will never forgive him, another reason why he will never forgive himself.

She stands for a minute, words stalled in her throat, and then she takes a stilted step forward, like she's forcing herself across the distance. He doesn't move, afraid that if he does she'll bolt, and he feels the air come out of him when she gingerly wraps her arms around his torso, touches so lightly he can hardly feel her. He complies with the gesture, reacts in kind. His arms come up of their own accord, accustomed to the motion, and it's an effort not to pull her closer and apologize, to take it all back, to wrap his fingers in her wild hair and tell her it's going to be okay, it will.

But she isn't the Ashleigh he knew, and he isn't the man she married, so he releases her when her arms slip away and the words, characteristically, aren't there. They aren't even lodged in his throat, unwilling to come out. They simply do not exist.

"I don't know if it means anything," she says, turning away and talking more to the farm than to him, although he hears her perfectly. He is attuned to her presence, and he expects he always will be. "But I hope you find what you're looking for."

He doesn't know how to respond, mainly because he doesn't know what he's looking for. He wants to say the words out loud: _I don't know what I want, Ashleigh, I don't_. He wants to put explanations to his actions, to his desperation, to every decision that resulted in leaving her behind, but the need and the will are not the same, and he can only nod and wish her well.

She gets in the car. The engine turns over with the flick of a wrist, the noise of crunching gravel grating over the silence. There is a moment when he hopes that she will never look back, but she does, of course, and that yearning, that hope for her punishment is gone. Vanished. Just like that.


End file.
